<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p><jats:italic>Murraya paniculata</jats:italic> (Linn) Jack, syn. <jats:italic>M. exotica</jats:italic> Linn., commonly known as orange jessamine, is grown in gardens for its large clusters of fragrant flowers. Distillation of the fresh flowers in water furnished the essential oil in 0.027% yield. Extraction of the fresh flowers with pentane afforded the concrete (0.78%). Precipitating the waxes from the concrete with methanol gave absolute (0.62%). The chemical composition of essential oil, concrete, absolute and wax were analysed by GC and GC–MS. The components of essential oil in significant amounts were <jats:italic>δ</jats:italic>‐elemene (1.4%), (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐caryophyllene (3.6%), germacrene D (2.7%), (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐nerolidol (25.7%), benzyl benzoate (8.1%), phenyl ethyl benzoate (8.0%) and manool (18.7%). The major components in the concrete and absolute, respectively, were phenyl ethyl alcohol (2.9%, 3.0%), indole (0.8%, 1.0%), (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐nerolidol (6.5%, 7.0%), benzyl benzoate (5.0%, 6.5%), phenyl ethyl benzoate (8.0%, 8.6%) and manool (25.2%, 27.9%). The methanol‐insoluble wax contained (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐nerolidol (2.6%), manool (9.4%) and most of the fatty acids/esters. The composition of the volatile components in the headspace emitted by flowers still on the branch (live flowers) and also by the picked flowers was determined by HS–SPME on a PDMS fibre and these results are also presented. The major components found in the headspace were linalool, indole, (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐caryophyllene, germacrene D, bicyclogermacrene and (<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>,<jats:italic>E</jats:italic>)‐<jats:italic>α</jats:italic>‐farnesene. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.